PETERBOROUGH, Ont. – The owner of an Ottawa voter-contact company told Dean Del Mastro he believed the MP wanted invoices for voter-contact calling work altered so his re-election campaign wouldn’t break its legal spending limit, a court heard Thursday.

Holinshed Research’s Frank Hall described in court a series of angry emails exchanged with Del Mastro as their business relationship soured over unpaid debts in the year after the 2008 federal election.

Hall said he was frustrated by Del Mastro’s failure to pay Holinshed for developing a custom software package, GeoVote, used to track constituents.

After Hall’s brother and partner in the firm, Colin Hall, threatened legal action to collect on the debt, the then-Conservative MP announced that he was severing their relationship.

“I’m sick of the entire saga,” Del Mastro wrote back, according to the Aug. 30, 2009, email presented in court.

In his testimony, Frank Hall read from the email response he sent to Del Mastro.

“I’m sure you’ll agree any reasonable person would conclude you never had any intention of upholding our contract,” Hall wrote. “You will also recall that I granted your request to alter our invoice amounts and dates, after the fact, for our election work (unknowingly) so you could avoid officially breaking your spending limit allowed in the Elections Act.

“It is not good business and not good politics.”

The commercial dispute over the software deal eventually led to a civil lawsuit that was eventually abandoned. Later, it prompted an Elections Canada investigation of spending on voter-contact services that Hall says the now-defunct Holinshed performed for Del Mastro during the 2008 election.

Hall told the court he had become suspicious about the way the Del Mastro campaign reported Holinshed’s work in Elections Canada filings, even before they had their falling-out.

Hall had learned that, in its financial statement, the Del Mastro campaign claimed to have paid the company only $1,575 – far less than the $21,000 worth of voter-identification and get-out-the-vote calls Hall said were made during the election.

But Hall admitted he continued to alter invoices at the MP’s request, in the hopes of completing the deal for the GeoVote software. The purchase of the software package kept getting delayed, Hall testified, and he was starting to get worried.

“I had been asked to alter invoices so many times, I needed to be careful,” he said.

He said he emailed Del Mastro to express his concern. He told the then-Conservative MP in an email that he would not continue to change invoice dates “if this may lead to something improper,” adding that “I feel that may be the case.”

Del Mastro responded by email, writing, “Where is this coming from?”

In a subsequent telephone conversation, Hall expressed his frustration, he said, and Del Mastro apologized and promised they would keep working together.

“He just said there are some issues he’s trying to work out and he needed my help to do that.”

At Del Mastro’s request, Hall said, he issued yet another invoice for the voter-contract work. This version was addressed to Del Mastro’s riding association, not the campaign, and dated to Dec. 10, 2008.

Asked by the Crown prosecutor why he agreed to do this, Hall said, “I hope to finally be able to set up the system that I had been chasing him for a very long time, and repair relations and move forward.”

The Crown contends that Del Mastro and his official agent, Richard McCarthy, failed to report the true value of Holinshed’s work in an attempt to cover up overspending by the campaign.

Hall returns to the stand Friday morning and cross-examination was expected to begin later in the day.

What the charges are

Both are charged with overspending on an election campaign and filing an incorrect financial report with Elections Canada. Del Mastro is also charged with making an illegal donation to his own campaign.

The trial

The trial, which began Monday, may run as long as three weeks. If convicted, Del Mastro and McCarthy would each face maximum penalties of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

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